


Agent Thompson Regrets

by wordsandbirds



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 03:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5481425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsandbirds/pseuds/wordsandbirds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of the season finale, Peggy comes across Agent Thompson grappling with his decisions. One-shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Agent Thompson Regrets

Peggy found him at the bar, his hand curled around a glass of whiskey whose depths he was despondently examining, his mouth twisted in the particularly bitter fashion of one who had tasted that most sour of all flavors: regret. She pursed her lips. Good. He ought to be wallowing in it, considering what he had done. And yet… Pity. Peggy couldn't believe it, but there it was, rising up in her breast right where she had expected a kind of savage triumph to emerge. She was feeling sorry for him. Him, of all people: the man who had stolen her victory for himself, and shunted her back off into the corner with the coffee tray and lunch lists.

She teetered on her heels, hesitating, not sure whether she ought to turn around and walk away, or give in to this sudden, traitorous surge of sentiment. In the end, the latter won out (she wasn't sure how), and she found herself walking up to him. Resting her purse on the stretch of open counter space beside his glass, Peggy leaned up against the bar, studying his face. 

"You know, I don't quite understand you, Thompson," she observed, her voice quiet, but firm. 

Thompson raised his hangdog gaze from his whiskey glass to her face. "What's not to understand?" he asked. Laughing harshly, he lifted his glass to his lips and knocked back its contents in a single fierce gulp. "I'm scum."

"At least you're honest about it," Peggy remarked dryly . "For the moment, anyways."

He laughed again, a sound as mirthless and angry as the last. "Seems I can only be honest around you, Carter."

They stared at each other, and Peggy was transported back to the last time he'd been open with her, on the plane back from Russia. The circumstances couldn't have been more different: then, the rumbling of the plane's engine had provided a soothing backdrop to their conversation, mingling with the moonlight and their recently kindled camaraderie to add a certain something beyond her sympathy and his vulnerability; at one point she would have dared to call it a real connection. Now, however, a frenetic jazz number played on the radio and a thoroughly American crowd pressed in around them, loud and crackling with the same fiery energy filling the gulf that had sprung up anew between them.

One thing, though, one thing only was the same: the raw pain lurking in the depths of Thompson's eyes, the pain of a broken man, a coward, trying desperately to seize the mantle of the hero that he had never been. 

"I wish that weren't the case," she said softly. 

"Me, too, Carter," he sighed, returning his gaze to the now-empty whiskey glass before him. "Me, too."

They lingered on in silence for a while longer. Then Thompson waved the bartender over for a refill, and Peggy excused herself with a murmured "Goodnight" and walked out of the bar into a serene Brooklyn night, reflecting with not a little sadness on how some people just couldn't manage to change.


End file.
